Yes, they were”free” bc the govt bought and paid phizer et al for all of them and then the govt acted as the distributor for them instead of the pharmaceutical industry.
Yes, for sure some unnecessary deaths have occurred.
There’ll definitely be more pandemics,
as global temps rise, more and more diseases that were confined to tropical areas will freely spread in once temperate zones (USA). And we can expect more viral etc mutations. To wit, there’s apparently so crazy dangerous fungal infection spreading esp in hospitals and among immune compromised people that has mutated bc it used to not survive above 98 deg but now it can and that means it survives inside the human body now, it’s also immune to most if not all known anti fungals.
The real tragedy here is a lot of folks feel the way you do about vaccines/emergency public health measures bc of the Covid vaccine and pandemic response shitshow. The danger is Covid was really just a tabletop exercise in reality for what we need/should do in the event of a real pandemic which is inevitably coming. When damn the side effects give me shot bc 90% of folks are dying type pandemic hits, and
we have amazing medical technology to quickly save us, but too many folks feel the way you do, there’s gonna be a lot of unnecessary suffering death and damage to our economy/society.
It’s the story of the boy who cried wolf unfortunately.